Promises
by Fanna Girl
Summary: When you get married, you make a promise. A promise to love and cherish and have and hold, no matter what. Annabeth Chase knows that - but she also knows first-hand how easily those promises are broken. So when her boyfriend proposes, she's torn. But marriage is about promises. And Percy is about to make all of them. Percabeth AU (Sorry for the sucky summary.)


It was the perfect proposal.

He had taken her to the top of the Empire State building on New Year's Eve, and they had stood there as the rest of New York counted down to the ball drop in Times Square. And then, right before the next year came rushing towards them, Percy Jackson had gotten down on one knee and asked Annabeth Chase to be his. And she had said yes. Who wouldn't say yes, after all? They were in love. They'd been dating for two years now. She couldn't think of anyone else she'd want to spend the rest of her life with.

It's what came afterwards that was less than perfect.

The drive home from the Empire State building was unbearably awkward. They didn't speak – every time she glanced at Percy he simply smiled back and squeezed her hand. Their easy, teasing conversation was gone. And that's when all of her worries started flooding in.

What if they started acting differently? What if they could never talk like that again? What if he stopped being Her Percy after they got married? What if they could never talk and act stupid anymore? How could they be able to, after something this big? How do you talk to someone after something like that? What do you talk about? Would it just hang over them every time they tried to have a normal conversation? Would they not talk about it? Would they…ignore it? Or would he want to talk about it and plan?

And what about _after_ they got married?

Would they become her parents? Would they start fighting about stupid things and slowly start hating each other, like they had? Would they end up splitting up, too? She and Percy hadn't even moved in together yet. What if he hated how clean she kept things? What if he didn't like living with her?

The thoughts spiraling through her head made her feel sick, and by the time he dropped her off at her apartment, she was barely able to say goodbye, her mind elsewhere as they kissed each other goodbye.

He waved as he pulled away, that familiar goofy grin on his lips, and she had to force a smile back as she wiggled her fingers in response, watching him drive away. All she could think about was the day he might not smile at her like that anymore.

She didn't even realize she had walked into her apartment building and up the stairs to her apartment until she reached the door. Even then, she was completely distracted as she slid her key into the lock, opening the door robotically and closing the door without relocking it for the first time in her life. She didn't even bother to change into her pajamas, instead just sliding off her shoes and brushing her teeth before collapsing onto the bed.

()()()

That night, Annabeth dreamt of her parents. She dreamt of her mother screaming at her father in the kitchen, blind to Annabeth hiding in the doorway. Her father's face was red with rage, yelling about working late because of finances and how he can't believe she'd accuse him of cheating. Athena shouted back that she couldn't believe he'd come home at midnight _on Christmas Eve_ when they have a _daughter_ to raise and take care of and then –

Then their faces began to change, morphing into the faces of her and Percy, and suddenly it was Percy defending himself against Annabeth's accusations and complaints, his blue eyes narrowed and no longer glittering in love at the sight of her. His expression showed only anger and resentment and tiredness, just as her father's had, and Annabeth's expression held the same dark quality.

"_Don't you trust me?"_ the dream-Percy yelled, his tanned face pink with anger and frustration, and the younger Annabeth, still hiding in the doorway, watched with fear and pain as her older self looked the man she loved in the eye and shook her head once, firmly.

"_No,_" she replied, her voice soft suddenly, but strong. "_No, Percy, I don't."_

The dark-haired boy stared at her with a cold lack of emotion, his jaw set in the way Annabeth knew meant he was about to say something rash and hurtful. "I can't be with someone who doesn't trust me," he replied, his voice gruff, and Annabeth knew what he was saying, what he meant, but her heart still shattered as the words left his imagined lips. "_We've been fighting this for far too long, Annabeth, and I'm tired of arguing. I'm leaving_."

He takes a deep breath, and Annabeth can see tears in the grey doe eyes of the child in the doorway. "_I want a divorce_."

The pang echoing through her chest was enough to wake her up, and she shot up in her bed, tears streaming down her face. "No_,_" she whispered softly, her voice cracking as the word slipped out of her lips, burrowing her face in her hands and curling into a ball. "No, no, no…not Percy and I…no..."

Her despairing, desperate sobs were met with the silence of the apartment, the cold of her winter-chilled apartment curling around her in an icy hug that chilled her to the bone as she sobbed for her both her past and her possible future.

()()()

The next two weeks consisted of ninety-eight missed calls, fifty dismissed texts, and the same nightmares over and over again. But she didn't know how to face him, how to explain what she was feeling, how worried she was about their future, together, about how they might change. It wasn't until the seventeenth of January at one fifty-eight A.M. after an especially bad nightmare that she finally grew the courage to call her fiancé back.

"Annabeth?" he answered, his voice scratchy and deep from tiredness. She could imagine him sitting up in bed shirtless, his phone pressed lazily to his ear, his blue-eyes half-lidded with sleep as he ran a large, tan hand through his already-messy black locks. She smiled through her tears, choking back a sob. He heard the sound and was immediately alert, his heart thumping in his chest across the line, "Annabeth? Babe, what's wrong? Are you alright?"

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes shut, ignoring his urgent, worried questions and caring tone. "Percy, I…" her voice shook as she breathed out the words, her grey eyes shut tightly as she rubbed her forehead, trying to sound more like her usual self. "I-I can't marry you."

The other side of the line was silent for a long beat as he tried to breathe properly, his chest crashing in on itself at her words. His head was spinning, and it felt like the world was breaking apart under him. He could still hear her crying on the other end of the line, and he knew he had to try to calm himself before he helped her.

"What?"

She sniffled, curling into a ball, her vision blurred with tears as she stared out the large windows of her bedroom at the New York skyline. "I'm sorry Percy," she says softly, her own chest crumbling as she hears his sharp intake of air on the other side of the line.

"Annabeth…" his voice is low, struggling to say clear and calm as he fights the urge to cry, himself. "Annabeth, what's going on right now? Why are you saying this? Don't you…don't you _want_ to be with me?"

Her heart breaks all over again at his words, and she lets out another strangled sob. "Of course I do, Percy! I just…it's…" Annabeth closes her stony eyes, trying to collect herself. "What if we act differently? I don't want it to be awkward and for us to not act like we always have, I want things to stay as they are, all in love and stuff.

"What if we get divorced, Percy? What if you end up hating me, like Dad hates Mom? What if you end up not loving me anymore? What if you don't want anything to do with me in ten years?" Her voice has been steadily rising, and she's practically yelling in hysteria. "What if you stopped watching movies with me every Friday night and baking me those stupid blue chocolate chip cookies and getting me ice cream at four in the morning because I'm on my period? What if we stop being _us_, Percy?"

Her voice is quiet, convulsing as she takes another deep breath, collapsing backwards onto her bed and covering her eyes with her palm. "I don't want to stop being us," she whispers. "So I can't marry you."

Percy nearly laughs in relief, but holds it back, warmth flooding through him as his worries of her not wanting him anymore left him. Of course she wanted him – she was His Annabeth, and he was Her Percy. No, she, herself was just worried. And he could help her with that. This was something he could fix. He just needed to reassure her.

"Annabeth Chase," he says after a moment, "you are the smartest girl I know. So you must've bumped your head or something and lost a few brain cells to think that I could ever stop loving you." She began to object, but he shushed her. "I'm not done yet, Wise Girl." The use of her old nickname stopped her from speaking, and he smiled as he continued.

"I have been in love with you since we met at summer camp in seventh grade and you punched Clarisse for making fun of my blue food," he said, standing up and tugging on a pair of jeans as he spoke. "I've been waiting to ask you to marry me since that day, when you first smiled at me and rolled your eyes and called me Seaweed Brain. Heaven knows, I tried to stop loving you in those first few years, back in high school. I was practically tripping over myself following you everywhere anyways, though, and you didn't even realize it. I was your best friend for _eight years_, Annabeth, and I was in love with you the entire time."

She was silent now, just listening to the beautiful words leaving her boyfriend's mouth, ignorant to the fact he was now pulling on a shirt. "Now, a lot of people would call that crazy. And maybe it was. You've argued many times that I am, in fact, stark raving mad. And I might be. But the fact is that I haven't stopped loving you for _one second_ of those eight years. How many seconds is that, Wise Girl?"

"Roughly thirty-one million, five hundred thirty-six thousand," she replied immediately, and he chuckled, causing her to bite her lip, her hand sliding away from her face as she stared at the ceiling, picturing him beside her, whispering these words in her ear and stroking her back.

Pulling on socks, Percy continued confidently, determined to convince her of how he felt once again. "So, I have loved you for roughly thirty-one million, five hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds of my life, and you're telling me that one day I'm just going to stop?"

He didn't give her time to respond as he slid on his Converse and a winter jacket, opening the door to his apartment quietly. "Annabeth, I promise you right now that I will never stop watching movies with you on Fridays, and that we will never become your parents. I promise you right now that I will always make you the bluest food in the entire world and buy you ice cream at three A.M. in the middle of winter and sing to you off-key on the anniversary of the day we met. I promise you that we won't argue over money, and that I will love living with you, because I love everything to do with you, and I've hung out at your apartment so many times that it already feels like your home is my home. Because, Annabeth Chase, _you are my home._"

He moved quickly down the stairs to the first floor, talking as he went. "I promise never to hate you, even if you steal my pens and snap at me while you're on your period and tell me that you never want to see me again. I will not leave your side unless you force me out of my spot there, because I never want to be the reason for your tears, and I always want to be there to help you through them."

Percy didn't even bother with his car, just walking quickly down the two blocks to her apartment building. "And, the thing is Annabeth, I know exactly where we will be in ten years. Do you want to know where we'll be?"

Her voice was small as she croaks out a yes, and he smiles, striding towards the building as it comes into sight.

"We'll be happy," he replied quickly, his voice bright and urgent as he opens the door to her building, heading up the stairs. "We'll be married, with two kids who are as smart as you and as weird as me, two little girls with your hair and my eyes, and they'll be happy, too. They'll love you just as much as I will, even though sometimes they get angry with us. We'll live in a house by the sea – two stories, with a wrap-around porch and a swing. You'll complain about the smell of fish every single day, but you'll smile when we go out with the girls and splash around during the summer."

Annabeth laughed despite herself, sniffling as the images flutter through her mind, as well, her worry lessening with every soothing word. "We'll never fight about anything except what movie we're going to watch every Friday while our daughters sit in front of us in a fort on the floor, doing their homework."

He stood in front of her door now, trying the doorknob and praying she hadn't locked it tonight. To his delight, she hadn't, and he stepped in quickly and quietly, still speaking to her, his voice lower so she can't hear it from the bedroom while he closes the door behind him. "And we're never going to stop being like that," he promised.

"I promise you that we'll always be us. We'll always be those dorks from summer camp that argued over whether Poseidon or Athena were cooler, and that's exactly how I want us to be, Annabeth. I didn't ask your parents to marry me. I asked you – my Wise Girl, my Annabeth."

She was silent for a long moment, wiping at her eyes as he moved down the hall to her bedroom door. "You mean it, Percy?" she asks, sounding more like herself, though her voice was still water-logged, and he nodded, twisting the doorknob and stepping in with a grin. She looked up at the noise, her eyes widening at the sight of him, her mouth falling open slightly.

"Of course," he replied nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders in usual Percy fashion. "I also promise you that leaving your door unlocked in New York City is a good way to get murdered."

She ignores his joke, smiling through her tears as she drops her cell phone and leaps off of the bed and into his arms. "I'm so sorry Percy," she cries into his shoulder. "I'm so, so sorry. I don't know why I…I love you so much." He hugs her into his chest tightly, turning off his phone and stroking her hair with a smile, kissing her forehead.

"I love you, too, Annabeth," he murmurs, his lips curling upwards. "I promise that I always will, too. Now let's go to bed, okay?" She nods into his shoulder, tilting her head up and pulling away slightly to look into his eyes, her grey ones still teary.

"How did I get a fiancé like you?" she wonders aloud, and he winks, smiling that goofy smile that still makes her stomach twist after roughly thirty-one million, five hundred thirty-six thousand seconds of knowing him.

Pulling her closer for a moment, he presses his forehead against hers, their noses brushing, that loving, teasing glint in his eyes. "I don't know," he replies softly, his tone joking. "Maybe it's because I thought you were a good kisser."

Annabeth's lips turned up in a smile, and she giggled. "Oh, well in that case, I should probably kiss you if I want to keep you around, right?" she asked, and his smile widened, his hand rising to cup her cheek.

"Nah," he mumbled, stroking her cheek bone with his thumb, his intensely beautiful eyes trained on her face. "Your amazing intelligence and personality would probably do a great job of that on their own. But it would be awfully nice."

"Suck-up," she scoffed, but before he can respond, she crashes her lips against his, and there's one thing that she knows whole-heartedly in that moment.

And that thing is that she didn't just get the perfect proposal.

She got the perfect fiancé, too.

* * *

**Um, erm, hi there.**

**This is my first PJO fanfic/one-shot/attempt.**

**I hope you like it? I tried, anyways, haha.**

**Review and stuff, I guess. :)**

**~Anna**


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